So I realize I'm late to the game on this, but figured I'd put it out there before a blew a shit ton of money.
Situation: Wife went back to work in January 2016. Her job blows and with her commute (going from Circle C to the Domain) she's borderline useless in getting the kids to/from school/child care. I'm working from home, so my schedule is somewhat flexible, except that sometimes I have to be on site for something and then its not, but all this shit ends up falling on me. 3yo is at Primrose, so her child care is set up. 6yo is just completing kindergarten at public school. Last year she was at Primrose so summer child care was taken care of. Over the two week Christmas break, I had the bright idea that I could manage her at home while I worked since its usually super slow in our business (Construction) at that point and lots of her friends on the street would be at home as well.
That was a complete fucking disaster as my partner was out of town for his honeymoon and due to some backups, a shit load of work was being done on one of our custom projects. My wife was able to help some the second week as her office was closed, but it still didn't work. Regardless, I knew it would never work for the whole summer. So for Spring Break, we did a camp at Lifetime fitness. She liked it and good news/bad news was that she was pretty wiped out at the end of the day.
So now we come to summer. I've signed her up for a few camps that I know she wants to do and we're taking a family vacation for a bit over a week in July. I'm leery, however, of putting her in non-stop camps for the 10 weeks we're not on vacation. That just screams burn out to me, and fuck the prices on a lot of these things are high for a week! I had a stay at home mom, so I have no experience with this growing up. My wife basically stayed at a friends house or her older brother watched her. We have no family that can help out unfortunately.
So what is the experience of Surly in this? Those of you that are single parents or dual income, do you just do non-stop camps? Is it possible to hire a care giver but just for the summer? This whole thing is just beating me down. Thanks for any advice.